


Raising Men

by Arwyn



Category: due South
Genre: (I mean it's my Fraser and my Ray so of course it's preslash and pre-F/K), AIDS reference, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Nonbinary Character, Parent-Child Relationship, Pre-Slash, Queer Character, Queer Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-24 22:04:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4937059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arwyn/pseuds/Arwyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On fathers and the failures of raising men.</p><p>(Or, the damage caused by enforced heteronormativity and hypermasculinity: an intergenerational study.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Raising Men

**Author's Note:**

> Three sections, three father/child relationships, four POVs. Diminishing word counts: 400, 200, 100. I couldn't make the stories even, because they aren't, so I made them artistically mathematical.
> 
> My belligerent beta, the ever-pedantic HereEatThisKitten, would like me to point out that, according to IMDb and the show's credits, Ray Kowalski's father is named Damian, not Damien. But since that doesn't even exist as a character tag, and, as she also agrees, is a terrible way to spell the name, I am not using it here. One day, perhaps, she will forgive me. But likely not today.

Damien was a family man. He slaughtered cows and rebuilt cars, loved Barbara and their one skinny, hyperactive, obnoxious son. He watched Brando movies, because that’s what men did, family men, his type of men.

Stanley got older, wore bracelets and eyeliner, danced to punk music. Damien saw who he himself was not, who he never allowed himself to be, and he feared.

When Stanley married Stella, it was a relief (no, _wrong_ , it was wrong), and Damien joked about movies, about Streetcars and heartthrobs and fate, and he said son, you’re a family man now, men have families. He didn’t say no, don’t, your life will be longing and walking out at night and fumbles in the dark.

(Barbara loved Stella, loved her as a woman loves a woman who loves men like them.)

When Stanley joined the force, it was too much. Much too much, too much to see his son in the uniforms he feared on those few fleeting nights, running through the bushes to escape their batons. Too much to see him join the hunters when he knew -- Damien _knew_ \-- Stanley’d be the prey someday, when Stella wasn’t enough. And so he turned away, turned his back, and hoped it turned out better for his son, somehow.

But time passes, and things change. The bathrooms and the bushes and the bars emptied out (he never risked the bars, the light, the words and talking and eyes), and he learned the comfort of a familiar hand held in his. He loved his wife, loved her as someone he’d known since soda bars and softshoe on the wireless, and that was, most of the time, enough.

When he heard, from Stella to Barbara to him, that Stanley and Stella had split, that there were no children, no family, he was so sad (so relieved), because men should have families, men should be family men. When he heard, from Stella to Barbara to him, that Stanley still wore that damn steel bracelet, wore his hair in spikes and passions in his fists, that he was a detective now (never on Vice, and how he’d escaped it Damien didn’t know), that he was him, no family man, but an upright man regardless, well. Maybe he doesn’t need to be Stanley after all. Maybe Ray will be just fine.

Damien pulls the GTO out of storage, and thinks of his son.

*****

Vecchio Sr tries to make sure his only son grows up right, though he knows it’s a loser’s bet. He's seen the way Ray's too damn nice to his own Ma, how he’s always trying to help out in the kitchen and with the babies. Caught him playing with little Frannie and her dolls, once -- Raymundo didn’t sit for a week after that, and he never caught the sissy at it again. He ain't having it, not under his roof. No boy of his is gonna be less than a _man_ , not if he has anything to do with it.

Ray never understood his Pop, thought maybe when he hit his teens, hormones and lanky limbs and a suddenly deeper voice, and it became clear his head was only turned by girls, turned in the right way -- he thought maybe that would be enough. When it wasn't, well, Frankie from a few blocks over was shaping up to be the right kind of man, according to Pop. A man’s man, a man’s manly son, and he sure smiled like a man, confident, charming, shark-like. So he made friends there, until -- until he just couldn't, and to hell with Pop anyway.

*****

What Benton’s father could never understand is that Benton would never be the right kind of man. He’d tried to be, tried so hard, since he was so young, and it ended the life of a majestic animal, far from where it could be of any practical use to anyone.

Benton’d cried in Quinn’s arms that night.

It was but the first of many lessons Quinn stood by him for -- from mistakes made, mostly -- and slowly, slowly, he learned the largest, deepest truth: that he would never be the right kind of man, because he wasn’t a man at all.


End file.
